Aaron Dontez Yates (born November 8, 1971 in Kansas City, Missouri), better known by his stage name Tech N9ne or Tecca Nina is an American rapper, co-owner of Strange Music Records and actor. His career has spanned 24 years, during which he has released ten albums. His tenth studio album, K.O.D., was released October 27, 2009. He has spent his illustrious career making sure he’s been grinding harder than the average rapper, and is the best selling artist out of his hometown. With nine solo albums and two powerhouse collaboration projects under his belt, the Kansas City MC’s flow is sharper and slicker than it’s ever been.

Hip-hop ambitions are often described in terms of "hunger", but no known MC has an appetite quite like Brotha Lynch Hung. This is not simply the peckishness of a seasoned artist still making music while his former contemporaries have long passed their sell-by date. This is the ravenous hunger of Mannibalector, Brotha Lynch Hung’s flesh-chomping, gore-streaked altered ego and the antagonistic protagonist at the dark heart of Coathanga Strangla, the genuinely stunning new album by Brotha Lynch Hung.
Coathanga Strangla re-introduces listeners to the not so nice but strangely sympathetic guy they met on Lynch's 2010 album Dinner and a Movie. The "autocratic automatic reaper" instantly joined the entertainment biz pantheon of indelible killers like Mannibalector's cinematic predecessor, Silence Of The Lambs sicko Hannibal Lector. "I watch a lotta horror movies and I really love meat," says Lynch, "so I put that together and out came Mannibalector."
Longtime fans will, of course, recognize these deviant tendencies. Brotha Lynch Hung's 1993 debut, 24 Deep (Black Market Records) found his "human meat pot luck" already underway (who can forget the image: "find your brain cookin' in a barbecue pit"?). The 1995 release of the Sacramento (CA) native's certified Gold classic, Season of da Siccness, followed and Lynch has released a steady stream of music ever since, making him an ideal match for the do-or-die work ethic of his current label home, Strange Music.
Kansas City-based Strange Music is currently the most successful outfit in independent hip-hop and home to Tech N9ne. Dinner and a Movie was Lynch's first album released by Strange, but Tech N9ne and Brotha Lynch have history: Tech appeared on "187 On A Hook" from Lynch's Blocc Movement in 2001, and in 2006 Lynch delivered a standout verse on "My World" from Tech N9ne's Everready album. "Strange Music understands me, they've really given me a fresh start," says Lynch. "As strange as it sounds, I feel like I'm just getting going with my career."
Make no mistake however: what feels like a fresh start for Lynch is coinciding with a high point in his artistic evolution. Always one to look to movies for inspiration, Lynch says that repeated viewings of the Hostel films had a direct effect on Coathanga Strangla. "Some horror movies are too ridiculous," he says, "but Hostel has a very realistic feeling. It's not scary like boo! — it's more like this could happen. That's an authenticity I'm going for in my music."
It's that sense that gives Coathanga Strangla its compelling core. With its bowel-bothering bass line and toothpick percussion (courtesy of producer Michael “Seven” Summers), "Mannibalector" is a cannibal lecture (replete with requisite slaughter) the reveals the crucial facet of Lynch's artistry: his alter ego is not a two-dimensional creation but a character full of humanizing doubts, fears and paranoia. Allmusic.com's David Jeffries has noted Lynch's facility at going "from gross to scary to sympathetic and personal, and then back again, all without losing a step or trying your patience."
When it comes to digesting Lynch's art however, it helps that his raps are leavened by what can only be called "gallows humor." Who else would refer to his manner of cooking victims as "Operation McPasta", as Lynch does on the new album's "Mannibalector"? While Brotha Lynch Hung is often credited as the originator of the rap genre known as "horrorcore", most so-called horrorcore rappers would be content with a standard disemboweling; Lynch goes all the way, a meal plan immortalized on the new album's "Spit It Out" wherein Lynch chortles: "If anything taste funny spit it out."
"Friday Night" features Lynch's fellow rap madman C.O.S., thumping production by Michael “Seven” Summers, and Brotha Lynch's "body sweatin' like a Juggalo." "I love the Juggalos man," says Lynch of the cult-like, face-painted fans who have embraced him. "They're good people with good hearts who are looking for an outlet from life's pain. I can relate to that." Standout cut "Blinded By Desire" is a sadistic travelogue following Lynch as he drives from California's Bay Area southward towards Los Angeles ("524 miles to SoCal..." begins Lynch) where mayhem will undoubtedly ensue.
Coathanga Strangla is the middle album in a conceptual trilogy, which began with Dinner and a Movie and is slated to conclude with 2012's Mannibalector. Each of the three albums has spawned three videos, which together will comprise the visual document of the terrifying times of Mannibalector. "The three albums and nine videos are about a rapper who's having a bad life and is about to give up on the world," explains Brotha Lynch Hung. "You can hear he's about to walk the thin line, past the thin line, and then go way over it."
Join Brotha Lynch Hung as he continues to obliterate that line like no other artist can do.http://www.facebook.com/therealBrothaLynchHung

Samuel W.C. Watson better known by his stage name Krizz Kaliko, is an American rapper and singer from Kansas City, Missouri. He is a long time collaborator with fellow hometown native, Tech N9ne, even being signed to the label that Tech co-owns, Strange Music.

Krizz Kaliko began his musical career in the late 1990s when he began working with a local producer by the name of IcyRoc Kraven. Another local rapper by the name of Tech N9ne was also collaborating with IcyRoc at the time, which led to the two rappers meeting. Tech N9ne was currently working on a song titled “Who You Came To See” and Krizz made a comment that the song could have a better hook. Tech offered up the opportunity to prove his case, and Tech was blown away when Kaliko proved just that. Tech would bring Kaliko into his “inner circle” which would eventually result in Kaliko signing to the label co-owned by his new found friend.

Hotness drives hip-hop. The hottest albums, the hottest lyrics, the hottest beats, the hottest videos, the hottest clique: every rapper wants to have all of the above. Kutt Calhoun has them all and stands to be the next, hottest rapper. The Kansas City chief’s debut album, the scorching “B.L.E.V.E.” (Strange Music/MSC Entertainment), fires on all cylinders and introduces hip-hop’s next star to the world.

Kutt got the album title from people who deal with heat on a regular basis. “It’s a firefighter term that I got off TV,” he explains. “It means Boiling Liquid Expanding Vicious Explosion. That’s the most extreme hot that something can get. I figured I’d name it that because everybody’s saying they’re hot. I figured I’d come up with something that’s above that category and have that as my album title.”

The Atlanta metropolitan area stretches on for at least 30 miles beyond the Georgia Dome and the World of Coke. Peachtree Street (conspicuously void of actual peach trees) stretches up through several counties, changing its name a number of times, confusing the tourists and the transplants. Furthest to the north of the metro area, sits Gwinnett County; sprawling and well-populated by a mix of out-of-towners hoping to indulge in a slice of that oft-mentioned American Pie: a house in a subdivision with a yard for the kids. After closer observation though, it’s apparent that the suburbs of Gwinnett are the digs to many who don’t fit the cookie cutter, Stepford lifestyle. The county, more frequently being referred to as the Northside, boasts both million dollar homes on golf courses as well as drug hubs in neighborhoods riddled with gang activity. The Northside, essentially, is in stark contradiction to itself. Rapper Rittz is the Northside.
Raised in Gwinnett County, Rittz embodies the same level of irony and self-conflict as his hometown. Born into a musical family, he, his twin sister and their brother had always been exposed to the inner workings of music. The fact that their parents were heavily into rock and roll ensured that the kids were always around instruments or in studios. The family moved from small-town Pennsylvania (Waynesburg) to the Atlanta outskirts when he was eight years old, and once Rittz got to junior high, his musical tastes evolved. Atlanta’s booming bass and rap movement had traveled north on I-85 to get the entire metro area jumping.
”When I moved here, I was introduced to rap music. When I started rapping, I was listening to any early Rap-A-Lot records, like Willie D, Geto Boys… Kilo [Ali] was like the first. So when I started at 12 years old, my early raps, I tried to rap like them,” he explains, “But the early Outkast, and Goodie Mob was really the beginning of me wanting to rap and imitate them in finding my own style. Me and another guy were actually in a group called Ralo and Rittz [1995-2003], we were like the white Outkast, or we tried to be like that. I had a studio in my basement, and we put out a bunch of tapes in Gwinnett. I felt like we were one of the first, if not the first... There were only maybe one or two other people rapping in Gwinnett at the time, from ’95 to 2000.”
During the earlier part of the millennium though, around 2003, Rittz had hit a wall. After eight years, he and Ralo had matured in different directions. His promising buzz had led to countless disappointments. “I won Battlegrounds on Hot 107.9, got retired and shit and felt like I was ‘bout to make it. But, so many industry up and downs, with managers, contracts…” He was dead broke, feeling dejected, and living with friends- ready to resign from the rap game before even taking his rightful place in it. It wasn’t until 2009 when he’d randomly received a call from another flamespitter who was repping an area as under-the-radar as Gwinnett was. “I had some money behind me.” Rittz says, “Everything was going good and then everything fell out, at the same time, I’m getting older, thinking it’s time to hang it up. This isn’t gonna happen and that’s when Yelawolf put me on ‘Box Chevy.’ [on Yelawolf’s Trunk Muzik].”
Nowadays, the rap career of Gwinnett-raised Rittz is rapidly on the rise. From his affliation with one of the hottest new rappers coming out of the South to his first mixtape, Rittz White Jesus (hilariously inspired by a friend’s term of endearment), everything is coming together now, two years after he nearly lost everything. These days he’s booking late night studio sessions, and still clocking in to work early the next day. “I see both sides: the regular, working class type shit and then I’ve also seen a lot of the street shit that goes on here, some people that are blind to that here, may never have seen it.” Rittz says he’s “just a normal guy who raps”- a contradiction if there ever was one- but he makes you believe, with the humility of the everyman and the talent of a superstar.https://www.facebook.com/RittzMusic

There were times when more hip-hop albums sounded like this, like Ces Cru’s Constant Energy Struggles, the Kansas City duo’s debut full-length album on Strange Records. There were times when albums were formulated around concepts big and small, dedicated to pushing envelopes, sharing pin-pointed messages and built around lyrical conceits that required intense listening, confident rhyme flows that created new patterns, music that thumped and bumped and pounded and grooved. Those times are not now, but Constant Energy Struggles arrives in this moment—sounding not like an anachronism or a revival, but a celebration of a lineage that, while overshadowed by other aspects of hip-hop, has continued to evolve and progress outside of the mainstream.

It’s only fitting that Ces Cru—comprised of rappers Godemis and Ubiquitous—would release Constant Energy Struggles. For the past dozen years, the two have operated mostly as a duo, all that remained of the much larger Ces Cru.

“Ces Cru was a collective of like-minded individuals,” says Godemis, a founding member of the group since high school. When he first began rhyming, he was simply doing cover versions of albums like Mac Mall’s Illegal Business? “The thing at the time was to be able to learn the rhyme and not only know the lyrics, but to be able to spit them at the same capacity as the record. It was like having a guitar and learning a solo.” One day, during his sophomore year, while he was reciting some Boot Camp Clik verses, a classmate who was already rhyming, gave him some backhanded encouragement: Oh that’s cool, but you should write your own shit. “He said it like he was the shit because he was writing his own stuff and I wasn’t,” Godemis recalls. Not long after, a friend approached Godemis with headphones and let him hear a verse he had recorded over Das Efx’s “Microphone Master.” That night Godemis wrote his first rhyme. Soon enough, Ces Cru began to take root.

“We made a lot of music without any clear direction,” says Godemis, adding that Ces Cru became infamous for shutting down ciphers and studio sessions about town. “We just tore up the streets in Kansas City together. It went from being more like a gang to a group as things progressed, as we started booking shows and actually making albums and putting time and effort and money into the music. We just thought that one day we could possibly eat off this rap life and we enjoyed out-rapping motherfuckers.”

When Ubiquitous—a Colorado native who grew up on acts like Kool Moe Dee, LL Cool J and the Fat Boys as well as metal, punk rock, ska and electronica—moved to Kansas City in 2000, he had already been polishing his rap skills over jungle beats. “I used to rhyme at raves,” he admits. “I guess that’s why I like fast-paced rapping and making really progressive rhymes, stylistically speaking and content-wise.” Though Ces Cru had swelled to include six full-time rappers and had declared membership closed, Godemis was impressed by Ubi’s skills during a recording session and invited him to join the group. As time went on, members moved, moved on, went to jail–leaving just Godemis and Ubiquitous. “These days, it’s just him and I: Aquemini,” jokes Ubi. “We discussed the prospect of admitting other people into the crew, and even really strongly thought about it multiple times. But when it got down to the wire, we were like Nah, it just needs to be me and you. We’re probably done adding members for life and we’re just out here mobbing together.”

Together, the duo independently released 2004’s Capture Enemy Soldiers (featuring appearances from former member Sorceress) and The Playground in 2009—both heartfelt, intricate works of beats, rhymes and life that play with music, words and ideas with astounding ease. Since signing with Strange Music at the end of 2011, the duo has released a pair of solo mixtapes—Godemis’ The Deevil and Ubiquitous’ Matter Don’t Money—as well as an EP, 13. Their new release, Constant Energy Struggles, takes everything that has come before it and advances the
argument for hip-hop as a wordsmith's affair.

Produced by longtime collaborators Info Gates and Leonard Dstroy as well as Strange music’s go-to beatmaster, Michael “Seven” Summers and others, Constant Energy Struggles is a well-rounded affair, both musically and topically. The slow blues-rock of “Smoke” and the slight psychedelia of “Confession” address the issues of balance, strife and love within romantic relationships. “Wall E” speaks on the destruction of the Earth: “People pretend like the shit they using just disappears/As if it doesn’t accumulate every fiscal year/ Shit don’t evaporate, vanish without a trace/ There’s a island made of trash, you can spot it from outer space,” raps Godemis.

Closer to home are tracks like the rejoiceful “Shake It Up,” the introspective “Perception” and the menacing “Fuck Me on the Dough”—songs which deal with the ups and downs of blossoming fame: the delight of success, the expectations of fans, the shadiness of promoters. “Constant Energy Struggles comes from real life experiences,” confesses Ubiquitous. “Everything I’m talking about is stuff that actually happened to me in the past or recently.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening number, “Lotus” where Godemis notes that they “came a hell of a way from battling squads, murdering features” and admits that “they might’ve been local forever had Tech not swooped them.”